Kücklich: Homo Deludens : Cheating as a Methodological Tool in Digital Games Research

Kucklich, J. (2007). Homo deludens: Cheating as a methodological tool in digital games research. CONVERGENCE-LONDON-, 13(4), 355.

Kucklich's article is focused on the utility of cheating in games research, ie. cheating as a method. He is responding to some games researchers who believe cheating is not an acceptable research method.

'Cheating' in video games (and games more generally) is not clearly defined.

The article focuses on single-player games, with only a little time given to multiplayer cheating.

One objection to cheating is that it does not allow the researcher to experience the 'normal' game.

Another interesting point about cheating is its relation to the enculturation of the researcher. Kucklich points out that games researchers are generally expected to be more enculturated than other researchers, to be more 'native'. Are they resistant to cheating as part of this enculturation? or should they make use of game guides and cheat codes because these are part of the normal use of video games?

Another assumption is that the primary use of cheats in games by researchers is to make progress through the game easier. Kucklich would like to argue that there is an aesthetic component to cheating as well.

In a single-player game, cheating allows the researcher to explore the game more thoroughly and from other angles. Cheating allows the game to be 'deconstructed'. It "denaturalizes gamespace, and counteracts the manifold representational strategies used to make it appear realistic." It explores "the dialectic between exerting control and surrendering to the control of the game."

A section on genre-specific cheats references Kucklich's 'triangular matrix' for categorizing games.

Another section gives a brief overview of the literature on cheating and culture. This section includes a short discussion of MMO cheating.

The purpose of the article is to raise debate on cheating in MMOs among game studies scholars, and move the discussion away from the instrumentality of cheating to the aesthetics and culture of cheating. The article raises more questions than it answers. There are two parts I find useful: one is the bibliography on cheating, the second is Kucklich's argument that cheating is a deconstruction of the game.

I would see cheating and griefing online as behaviors that also work to 'deconstruct' the online space. This is particularly apparent among extremely self-aware groups like those out of 4chan or Something Awful. Their griefing if Anshe Chung in SL, for example, seems to point out the absurdity of making a fortune on virtual property. It refuses to take SL seriously. Similarly, goons in EVE routinely refer to the game as 'Internet spaceships' and claim to be playing not EVE but 'Something Awful'. These behaviors, like using no_clip to fly around a level of Deus Ex, seek to look at a game from outside.

One of the most interesting statements in the article was that 'cheating' "is a more fundamental form of play than playing by the rules", which Kucklich attributes to one of the contributors to his online discussion (357). However, this is not discussed further. One could see this addressed perhaps in Kucklich's assertion that cheating plays with the control inherent in the game - perhaps playing within and against rules is the more fundamental form of play that this unnamed contributor was referring to.

good citations:
Jakobsson, P. and Pargman, D. (2005) ‘Configuring the Player: Subversive Behavior in Project Entropia’, paper presented at the Changing Views, Worlds in Play Conference, Vancouver, BC (Canada), 16–20 June. URL (accessed 9 July 2007): http://www.digra.org/dl/db/06276.20328.pdf

Myers, D. (2005) ‘What’s Good About Bad Play?’, in Y. Pisan (ed.) Proceedings of the Second Australasian Conference on Interactive Entertainment, pp. 133–40. Sydney, Australia: Creativity and Cognition Studios Press. URL (accessed 9 July 2007): http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1109201#

Kimppa, K.K. and Bissett, A.K. (2005) ‘The Ethical Significance of Cheating in Online Computer Games’, International Review of Information Ethics 4: 31–8.